In an essay written by Robin Updike for the exhibit’s catalog, she described his early 1970s success in a post-Bay Area Figurative kind of abstraction: Bay Area Figurative limited to the landscape with colors that float. His landscapes are landscapes partly because he says they are and partly because a horizontal line through a rectangle reads as a horizon. His colors are gorgeous and finely honed.

In the late 1970s, he had to give up oils for health reasons. His ultimately successful struggle to come back in acrylics took years. “Oil has a luminosity and transparency,” he told Updike. “When I tried to get the same results with acrylic, I felt like I was painting a wall.”

Dailey is represented by the Francine Seders Gallery in Seattle (here), and at Laura Russo in Portland (here).